To Live Without My Life
by Wylis
Summary: Robbed of their lifetime together, how will Eric cope, and what will he do to get Sookie back?
1. Chapter 1

_I cannot live without my love, I cannot live without my life. _

8:30, I look at the clock and I feel my face contorting into a frown. She should be here by now. I am about to dial her cell phone when my own rings. It's her. "Lover where are you?" I say trying to keep the impatience out of my voice.

"Honey, I'm sorry Holy is running a little late. She just called and said that she would be here in about ten minutes. The bar is just packed tonight I can't leave until she comes." I take an unnesasary deep breath to calm myself. I know she can feel my frustration and I can hear her smiling indulgently at me on the other end. " I know honey, I miss you too, and I promise the second Holly gets here I'll hand things over to her and get my butt outta here. Okay?" Against my own will I feel myself smiling. I can feel that she wants to be with me as much as I want to be with her.

"Alright lover, I'll be here waiting with baited breath." I hear her laugh at that.

"Sure you will. Honestly honey, you made it a whole 1000 years without me, you'll be able to wait another half hour." That's what she thinks.

"While it's true that I did infact make it a 1000 years without you lover, the fact of the matter is that since having you in my life I find I have developed an intolerance for tardy waiteresses. I want you here with me." Where you belong, I add silently but don't say.

"Oh Honey she just walked through the door, I'm gonna go trade off, I'll be there soon okay. I love you. "

"And I you, hurry lover." At that we disconnect and I sit back in my chair in my office and wait to feel her coming closer to me. A few minutes later I start to feel the distance between Sookie and I lessening and I know that she is in her car now on her way to Fangtasia. Again I smile. I have been doing that uncommonly much lately, but the fact of the matter is that Sookie makes me...happy? Yes that is the word- happy. Everything about her makes me happy.

Perhaps it is because she is the one thing that I wanted badly that I actually thought I might not get. We Vampires are in general a very patient people, and I have always been blessed with the virtue in spades when I knew it was necessary to achieve a goal or gain something I desired. Yet Sookie cannot possibly realise how much patience I exercised during the time between meeting her and finally having her. First I had to wait through her relationship with Compton. Then through the were-tiger incident, as I call her misguided but thankfully brief association with that walking throw rug. Waiting for her to realize that the man she fell in love with when I was cursed is the same person that has been in front of her the whole time. Truly it was almost Zen like on my part.

Loosing my memories of our time together was another roadblock in our path, and then there was Rhodes where we all nearly died, the take over by Nevada, her abduction by the faires, the visit of my maker and his unbalanced progeny. It feels as though the deck has been unfairly stacked against us since my time at her home ended. And there were times when I truly despaired that I would never have her.

But after my maker met his final death things seemed to calm down considerably and they have remained calm for a year now. In that time things have changed for us and for the better. There are still bumps in the road of course. Sookie still insists on working for a living and she has not yet accepted my offer to live together full time. But she has started working mostly day shifts and has at least half of her belongings here in Shreveport with me. She even consented six months ago to let me make rennovations to her farmhouse so that we could have a light tight bedroom.

Though we never formally sat down and had our conversation about my time at her home during the curse, our "understanding" seemed to happen organically. Once Sookie allowed me in our relationship seemed to grow from there. Instead we have had many many wonderful nights lying in bed or in front of the fire at both our homes recounting and enjoying our memories of my time at her house. And I believe that Sookie has finally come to realize that while I am not completely the man she knew when I was cursed no more am I completely the hardened vampire that I show to the rest of the world. The real me lies somewhere inbetween, and though in the beginning I know she longed to have the cursed me back; I believe now she loves me for what I am and still sees the qualities in me that first drew her to me.

For me the contentment that I feel has been almost overwhelming. Sookie has been unknowingly hammering at the thick armor around my heart since we met. I desired her the moment I saw her. I was intrigued by her at our first conversation. After the maenad attack I came to respect her. By Dallas I genuinely liked her. By the night of the orgy I was beginning to fall in love with her, and by Jackson I was so far gone that I gave her my blood in quantity without a second thought. All of that before Hallows curse, before she even liked me. It has been a long road of waiting for me. Waiting for her to realize that we belong together. In the span of my life two years is like the blink of an eye. And yet while I lived those two years, patiently waiting for my love to love me back, I sometimes thought I would lose my mind. It has all been worth it though in the end. The wonderful moments we've shared in the last year are the stuff that will make another millenium of life on this earth livable to me.

The most wonderful moment yet happened not two weeks ago. Sookie told me in no uncertain terms that she wishes to spend the rest of her life with me. I know that she has always maintained that she does not wish to be turned. And I have given my word to respect her wishes. Yet I cannot but be hopeful that this is the first step in her changing her mind. To promise me the rest of this life it is a huge thing, and even if she never allows me to turn her, I will be content with having her for all of this lifetime. That night I held her to me tightly, told her that I wished for the same, and then I showed her till the first rays of dawn lit the sky how much I wanted to spend her life with her.

I know that unless she changes her mind I will evenutally lose her, but not for many, many years. And I will treasure those years. I will love her and keep her until time takes her from me. I will hold her to me and give her joy and pleasure and take joy and pleasure in return. And perhaps, perhaps if I am truly lucky she will understand that one lifetime does not have to be enough. There can be so much more, and that we can have it together. Nothing about our lives are normal and while that means that we have had to build our own happiness together without a map to start from, it also means that unlike others the possiblities are limitless.

As I have been letting my mind wonder Sookie has been getting closer and closer and she is now quite near. I pull myself from my reminising and decide to think about the here and now and plan out the rest of our evening. Sookie has the next two days off and will be staying in Shreveport with me so I want to make the most of it. It's just after 9pm right now which is still early enough to have a nice dinner out. I think also we might go to a late showing at the movies. Despite the fact that Sookie and I seperately, and most certainly together, will never hope to approach "normal" I know she derives great enjoyment from doing what she calls "normal couple things". Nothing could be more normal than dinner and a movie.

I pick up the phone and am just about to dial the number to Sookie's favorite restauarnt in town when I am literally overtaken by an excrutiating pain in my lower back. The shock of the pain is so sudden that I double over and loose my balance falling to the floor. The pain is so intense that for a few moments I can do nothing else but lie there stunned. As soon as it begins to recede just a bit I'm overcome by the first icy tentacles of fear. Fear because the pain is not mine. The pain is Sookie's. Another moment and I am able to get up. I begin to reach out across our bond trying to find her. She is very, very close.

"What happened?" Pam comes bursting into my office a look of worry marring her usually emotionless face. I have no time to waste talking and run past her down the hall and out the employee entrance. Without another word Pam follows. Just as I get out into the parking lot I am hit by another wave of pain. This one is not the sharp pain from before and it is not Sookie's pain. Instead it is as if something is being ripped away from me. And then I realize that I cannot feel her anymore. I Look over and see Sookie in the parking lot across the street lying motionless next to her car, but I feel nothing. Nothing but the unbearable tearing sensation in my chest.

I hear someone screaming and realize that it is me, screaming her name. But she doesn't move. She just lies there. Without another thought I start to run to her as fast as I can.


	2. Chapter 2

Pam's POV

We were across the street and infront of her car in less than a second. I had not really looked around before. I was too consumed with the overwhelming emotions coming from my maker. But now as I took in the sight in front of me I began to feel something that I have never felt before: Helplessness. We are too late. There is nothing for me to do but to watch the scene in front of me unfold.

Sookie Stackhouse, telepathic part fae waitress who has fought off vampires, weres, and fairies, who made us all love her even against our own wills, was lying dead in a pool of her own blood. The handy work not of a vengeful supernatural, but apparently of a mere human with a knife.

I knew that I would grieve her. I knew that for the first time in two centuries I would feel sadness. But I could not process any of that right now. Now I could only feel the overwhelming agony that was overtaking my maker.

Eric was kneeling with her in his arms. His pants steadily soaking up blood from the pool around him. He looked up to me bewildered and then back down at her. Then he tore his wrist open and put it to her mouth.

"Lover you must drink. You must have my blood. My love open your mouth." Eric tried to coax her softly as his blood dripped onto her face. Suddenly I felt my own feelings welling up inside of me, and again that helplessness. Surely he knew. I knew, so surely he must know, must feel it besides. It was too late. Yet he remained there talking to her corpse as though it were a particularly slow, particularly recalcitrant child.

"Lover, lover you must drink." His voice rose incremetally and the note of panic in it became more pronounced. "Sookie you must hurry, Sookie please!" He began to scream at her, shaking her.

"Eric stop." I whispered to him. "Eric she is gone." I made to move closer to him, my hand outstretched to touch him, to offer him some comfort even though the concept had here to for been unknown to me. But before I could reach him he pulled back and hissed at me, fangs bared.

"Do not touch your mistress. Go call for help, call an ambulance." My eyes widened at his command. And as I looked at him my feeling of helplessness was replaced by an even worse feeling: Fear. The look in his eyes was completely unhinged.

"Eric there is nothing anyone can do for her. Sookie is dead." I kept my voice even, level, I tried for emotionless. Suddenly I heard him scream. No words, nothing coherent, just pain. And then almost to fast for me to see he took to the sky and was gone taking Sookie's body with him.

I stood there for a few moments longer. Looking around me. Completely incapable of thinking about what I should do next. In my 200 years I have not loved many people. One of the people I loved had died tonight, and she might take the other person I loved with her. That thought chilled me to my very soul.

When Eric's maker died, I knew he felt very little in the way of sorrow over it. And in truth I think most progeny feel that way. A moment might pass where they remember all their maker taught them, or they might feel gratitude that they have been given eternal life, and then they realize that they are free and that feeling of freedom overshadows any small sorrow. It generally helps that most vampires where turned against their will and have little in the way of actual love for the being that stole their life.

Not so for me. I love what I am and I have from the moment I woke as a vampire. And I have always loved the man who gave me this life. A memory hits me and causes my stomache to feel tight. Sookie and I sitting on the shifters porch. The night I told her of my turning, and begged her to have mercy on my master. She asked me if I had loved him and I told her no. Of course that was a half truth but the whole answer was far to complicated, and really no one but another vampire could truly understand. What Sookie meant was had I loved Eric romantically, and the answer was honestly no. But to say that I don't love him is a lie. I love him with my whole being. He is my father, my brother, my friend, and yes once he was my lover. I owe him an unrepayable debt for giving me this life. I have always happily come when he called, and when I could have gone my own way I chose to stay, because my life is simply not as enjoyable without his presense in it. I love him in a way that no human walking this earth can ever understand. My relationship to him has been the defining relationship of my life. 200 years after my making he is more my father than my father was. We know each other in ways that no one else ever will. We have fought together, laughed together, cried together, I have loved him and at times hated him, rebelled against him and then run to his shelter, he has been my saftey and a few times I have even been his.

And now I could lose him. I saw the look in his eye. I saw the madness. Should it dawn on him at any point before sunrise that she is really dead, he will meet the sun, I have no doubt of it. This thought spurs me from my legarthy as perhaps nothing else could. As I prepare to go back across the street to my car I step on something and look down. The knife that was used to kill Sookie. Suddenly I am filled with overwhelming rage. It is an emotion that I am quite familiar with and one I now let wash over me. Allowing my vampire nature to come out and take me over. I pick the knife up and smell it. My fangs slam down so hard I actually feel my gums hurting slightly. There on it is the scent of her murderer. As I suspected the person who ended her life was no supernatural. The scent is entirely human.

I have much to do tonight. But the vermin scum who did this will suffer and suffer greatly. I raise my voice only slightly and call out Thalia's name. Within a moment she is out of the club, accross the street, and infront of me.

"Pam, you called me." She is looking around, and though she must wonder what I want she keeps her face completely nuetral.

"You recognize the car?" I ask her. She looks it over and her eyes widden almost imperceptably.

"It's Sookie's car isn't it?" She isn't really asking, and she isn't looking at the car. Thalia's eyes are planted squarely on the pool of congealing blood infront of the driver's side door, and the little handbag lying next to it. The contents of which are spilled all over the ground.

"Yes. She was murdered tonight." I hold out the knife to Thalia and she takes it from me. "With this. Can you smell the scent?" Thalia nods her fangs coming down as well. "Take it, find out who did this. Bring them to the warehouse. Do not kill them. Call me when it is done. Do you understand?"

"Only to well. It will be done." Without another word Thalia takes off into the night. She was never particualrly attached to Sookie, but she is loyal to Eric, and she is a vampire. She will take great pleasure in hurting the person who did this simply because we love to hurt things. If Thalia can succeed in finding Sookie's murderer than I may have the very thing that will induce Eric to live at least for a few more nights.


	3. Chapter 3

_Authors note: This is my first story and I forgot to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the first two chapters- I own nothing, I just love these characters and wanted to play with them._

Chapter 3- Pam's POV

When I arrive at Eric's house I know immediately that he is here. I park in the garage and let myself in, leaving my shoes at the door. My intention had been not to anger Eric in his already unstable condition, if he even noticed something as trivial as my footwear, but when I looked down I got another sickening jolt. There on the mat were Eric's shoes and next to them still caked in drying blood were Sookie's.

I made my way down the hall and saw the bedroom light on and the door ajar. I called out softly to Eric to let him know that I was there, but got no answer. Instead all I heard was a soft humming sound. I walked up to the door and gently opened it. I had no need to but I swallowed hard in an attempt to calm myself.

There on the bed wearing his bathrobe was Eric and in his arms was Sookie's dead body. In the time it had taken me to give Thalia her instructions and make it over here he had clearly bathed them both and had time to comb out her hair and dress her in the pretty matching nightgown and robe he had been saving as a present for her birthday. I looked at him and for the first time in our life together I felt pity for him. My strong, indomitable, brilliant, ancient, arrogant maker had lost his mind over the death of a girl, who in her life had, until recently, always seemed to make a point of how much she didn't care about him.

"Eric..." I didn't know what to say to him. "Eric..." I tried again, still nothing. "Are you... alright?" I very clearly knew the answer to that, but thought perhaps if I could get him talking... He looked up at me and seemed slightly startled that I was there. He hadn't even noticed me enter the house.

"Pam, what are you doing here?" He asked me, but his attention was already back on Sookie. He was stroking her hair and singing softly to her.

"Eric what are you doing?"

"I'm singing." Still looking down at her. " I don't want her to be scared when she wakes. She's had such a fright this evening. I think I will leave the light on for her too. Just in case she wakes after I have gone to my rest for the day."

"Eric she will not wake. Eric..." Before I can say anymore. He looks up at me and the look in his eyes is so cold, so utterly devoid that I take a step back. In all our time together I have never been afraid that Eric would hurt me. I have been insolent, insubordinate at times, and a downright pain in his ass at others. Never once has he treated me with anything but love. Sometimes that love was firm, but it was always there. Right now it is gone and I am suddenly concious of the fact that Eric could end me with only a flick of his wrist.

"Pamela, you are not welcome here right now. Sookie and I need privacy. Leave." The last is said so low it is barely a whisper, inaudible to any but vampire ears. But the menance in it is only greater for that. Instinctively I lower my eyes to the ground and begin to walk backwards out of his sight. I do not do this because he can rescind my invitation, or because he has commanded me as my maker. I do it so that he will see my submission, but also so that I am still facing him and ready for an attack should he decide in his unstable state to act on his unspoken threat.

"Yes master." I whisper. I have almost never called Eric master. But right now I use the word as if it were a talisman against harm. Once I am far enough down the hall that I can no longer see him, and he can no longer see me I turn around and run out of the house, barely remembering my shoes on the way out the door. Once I am safely outside though I sit on the back porch. I cannot leave him. Not in this state, it's too dangerous. Instead I take out my cell phone and dial a number I thought I would never ever call.

It's 9:45, just over the line of what Sookie has always calls "rude o'clock" but Alcide Hearvaux answers on the second ring.

"Pam, to what do I owe the pleasure?" He spits out the last word as though it were made of mud, but at this point I couldn't care less. Normally I wouldn't hesitate to sling something back at him, but tonight I need his help so I know that I am required to be polite.

"Herveaux, I require your help." I can hear him choke on something he must have been drinking on the other end of the line. We all played nice during the witch war but since then it's been back to every supernatural race for themselves. So I know I will have to do more than nicely say please. "I need to have four guards at Eric's house and hour and half before dawn. Can you do this for me? I may need them for several days. If you will help I will of course owe you the favor of your choice redemable at your leisure." The words want to stick in my throat. I hate going begging to a filthy dog, but I will not let my maker hurt himself while in the grips of his grief.

The dog is silent for a moment more and then he replies in the affirmative. He will send them and sit on his little favor. We hang up and I allow myself to slump back against the door.

Hours later the weres arrive, I'm surprised to find that Herveaux himself is among them. "You're here, good."

"What do you need us to do?" He asks looking around trying to get a feel for the surroundings.

"I need you to watch the house from now until sunset. Specifically I want you to make sure no one leaves." The dog raises an eyebrow at that but just nods.

"Will do." He says. As I start to head towards my car the three weres with Herveaux fan out around the house. Herveaux himself follows me to my car. "Alright Pam, what's really going on?" He asks in a low voice. I turn around and look him in the eye.

"Eric is not himself. I am afraid that he might try and... go out during the day. Do you understand?" Again his eyebrow shoots up, but he says nothing and just nods. "I'm surprised you came personally." I don't know why I'm making small talk with the dog, but after the events of the night I suppose my exchanging chit chat with a were wolf is the least offensive thing that has happened.

"I may not like it, but Eric is Sookie's man, and Sookie is a friend of the pack. I feel like that makes this a personal responsibility." My face stays neutral as he says her name but inside I feel that sickening tightness in my stomache again. He doesn't yet know that his obligation to Sookie is at an end. No one knows yet that she is dead, I feel as though I should tell him. Instead I just nod my head, get in my car, and drive the ten minutes to my house.

There is still an hour before dawn but, it's all I can do to drop my clothes on the floor, set the security system at the bedroom door, and then fall into bed. As I lay there waiting for the first rays of sun to take me to my rest I try desperately not to think. I try not to think about my friend who is dead. I try not to think of my maker who is unrecognizable as the man I have known for two centuries. And I try not to think of how I will handle all of this tomorrow night. I try so hard not to think of any of it. But in the end as I feel death take me for the day the last thing I see is Eric holding her lifeless little body in his big arms as gently as if she were a china doll.


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Chapter 4- Bill's POV

(2 nights later)

Judith and I are at the check out counter at the grab-it-kwik paying for two cases of True Blood when my cell phone rings. I look down at the display and give a long suffering sigh. What does she want? Why can I not just be left in peace?

I might not want to answer, but when your Sherriff's second calls letting it go to voicemail is not an option. I press the accept button and hold the phone to my ear.

"Pam, what can I do for you tonight?" I say in my most pleasant tone. Things with Eric have evened out so to speak. Now that Sookie is safely his of her own free will he seems less inclined to despise me and presumably my life is safer for it. Now I must only put up with him flaunting their relationship infront of me when I put in my monthly hours at Fangtasia. Unpleasant- certainly, but far better than final death.

"Compton, your sherriff requires your presence tonight. 1176 Synove Dr. in Shreveport. Be here within the hour." With that she hangs up. Judith is looking over at me as she hands over the money for our purchases. I sigh again, duty calls. I quickly drive Judith home and then get on the highway headed towards Shreveport. Pam was her usual vague self so I have no idea what it is that Eric wants of me. When I arrive at the address she gave me, I am still stumped, as they say. The very nice one story suburban house in the very nice upper middle class neighborhood gives no answers to my questions.

As I exit the car Pam opens the front door and ushers me inside. Clearly a vampire's house since I don't need an invitiation, and clearly not hers since I've already been to her house. I take a deep wiff of the air and immediatly I catch Eric's scent strongly, and just a hint of Sookie's as well. This must be his home then. What on Earth am I doing here?

I am just about to ask when I catch another scent. The very strong scent of death. Now that I have it I wonder that it took me so long to pick it up. Wherever the corpse is, it's close and it's not fresh. If I could be I think I would be nausiated right now. I am just about to demand answers from Pam when I really look at her for the first time.

If vampire appearances could change than I would say that her's has changed drastically since I saw her last week at Fangtasia. She looks drawn, tired, and stressed. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she looks as though she hasn't fed in a few days.

"Good god Pam, what's going on?" I normally pride myself on my good southern manners, manners that would insist that I not ask such a question of my hostess. Manners be damned right now.

"Bill sit down." Now I'm starting to truly worry. I'm sitting in Eric's house, which reaks of a many days old body, and Pam, who has never in her existence experienced a single human emotion that I can tell, has just asked me to sit down as though she wishes to impart some very bad news as gently as possible. The fact that she just called me by my first name without sneering is another truly bad sign. We both know that neither of us has a need to sit no matter what her news is, but arguing will only prolong the wait, so I sit.

"Bill I called you here because..." She trails off. She opens and recloses her mouth several more times before simply blurting out: "I don't know what to do and I'm hoping that you can help." my nausea is getting worse.

"Let's start from the beginning shall we. Where and who is the corpse?" Pam flinches slightly but otherwise remains placcid. She takes a deep breath and launches into the last story I have ever wanted to hear.

"Three nights ago, Sookie was driving from BonTemps to Fangtasia to spend the weekend with Eric. As far as I can surmise, there wasn't any parking around the club so Sookie decided to park accross the street in the lot of that closed down restaurant. While she was locking up her car, a human with a knife came up behind her and stabbed her in the kidneys. From the scene infront of her car I would say he was a thief since her purse was overturned and the only thing missing was her wallet. It only took Eric and I maybe a minute or two to get out of the club and accross the street, but as you know a stab wound to the kidneys is farely quickly fatal to a human. She was dead by the time we got to her." Pam says the last in a soft whisper and I feel bad for my earlier assessment that she is incapable of emotion. Even if she never had them before she is having them now. Sookie seems to have this kind of effect on anyone who gets close to her. It's why we vampires love her so much, and also why at this moment I could easily hate her.

I have been a vampire for 150 years. It is a short while in comparrison to many others of my kind. But in that time I have suffered a great deal of sorrow. My turning against my will, and my binding to a cruel and sadistic maker. The seperation from and then the deaths of my human wife and children. This exsistence is a lonely one, and death constantly surrounds us all. Up until a moment ago I would have said that it no longer had the power to bother me. Yet nothing could have prepared me for the words Pam had just spoken. Sookie was dead. Some peice of shit blood bag had ended the life of the only woman I had loved in a century and a half. It did not matter that she no longer loved me. It did not matter that she had been taken from me by Eric. I could have lived with all of that if I had known that she was happy. If I could have been in her presence from time to time, been her friend, basked in the warmth of her smile and the heard the tinkling bells of her laughter. But I would never see her or hear her again. My love was gone.

As I processed this news the smell of corpse once again invaded my sinuses and where before it had been disgusting but otherwise unconcerning now I begin to have a deep sinking feeling, this must be what seasickness feels like to humans.

"Pam, the corpse in the house?" She just looked at me for a moment, a single red tear slipping down her face. "Bill I have no idea what to do. He picked her up off the ground. Tried to give her blood regardless of the fact that she was clearly already dead, and when I tried to explain it to him, he bared his fangs at me and stole away with her. I got here 20 minutes later to find him in his room with her. He refuses to understand what's happened, he continues to insist that she will wake up. Bill he's lost his mind."

"What do you expect me to do Pam?" I wasn't be sarcastic or flippant. This was just about the worst situation I could think of, but honestly what _**did**_ she expect me to do. Eric had alwasy hated me because I had had Sookie first. If I went in there now, in his state, he was likely to rip me apart before I ever got a word out.

"Bill I don't know. But he knows that you love her too. Maybe if you talk to him he will listen to you. I'm at my wits end, nothing I say penetrates, and we have to burry her. He has to understand what's happened. "

There were at least two good reasons why I knew I had to do as she asked. As my sherriff I had a duty to Eric. Besides that I knew full well that Eric's strength and cunning were all that continued to stand in the way of final death or slavery for all of us at the hands of Nevada. It was in my own interest to help, but I didn't do it for either of those reasons. I did it because I knew that Sookie's heart would break to see Eric like this and I had to do anything I could to bring him back to his senses.

Sookie had loved us both, but in the end Eric had always been her protector. No matter how much she pushed him away he was always there making sure nothing happened to her. His bravery and strength were two of the things she admired most about him. She would not want him to suffer like this, to be reduced to this. For all the pain I had caused her, I owed her that.

Saying nothing I got up to find Eric. I didn't ask where his bedroom was, I just followed the sickening stench of decaying flesh and tried to steal myself for what I was about to see. "Bill..." Pam called me back from the living room. "If Eric will listen tell him that we have the one who did it. Thalia called earlier. She has him at the warehouse." At that I feel my fangs slam down. Oh yes I will tell him, and I will join him. I nod in Pam's direction and continue down the hall to the double doors at the end. The source of the foul smell that I now know to be the body of my sweet darling.


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Bill's POV

Before opening the door I knock softly. "Pam I have already told you to leave us!" He roars from behind it.

"Eric it's Bill Compton. I'm coming in, don't be alarmed." I say in as soft and soothing a voice as I can. I open the door slowly and leave it open a full five seconds before entering. Once in the room, I honestly wish myself anywhere else. Perhaps even back in the Barn at Russell's mansion with Lorena, anywhere but here.

Eric is kneeling on the other side of the bed holding her hand. If what is lying on the bed can even still be referred to as a "her". Sookie's body is stark grey with blue rimming her lips, hands, and feet. I can see even from my place at the door that her body is already riggured and stone stiff. The smell is so strong in here that I know I cannot take a single breath or I will be violently ill.

"Has Pam sent you to annoy me?" He sneers looking up at me briefly before turning his attention back to the body on the bed. I find that I cannot, CANNOT think of it as Sookie. Not if I am going to keep myself from breaking down, and going as mad as the pitiful vampire in front of me. "I already told Pam I will not leave her. She needs me!"

"Pam told me what happened. Why do you not believe her?" Can you reason with an insane person? I didn't know but I thought that was my best course of action, try to find out what his version of reality was. He looked up at me and for a moment I thought my life was over. I thought that he would walk over and simply sink his hand into my chest, pull out my heart, and then rip my head from my neck. That was the level of violence I saw in his eyes. But just as suddenly it was gone and he simply broke down in front of me.

"It can't...It can't end this way," he sobbed brokenly laying his head on her stomache and weeping openly. "It's not time yet. I swore, I swore I would give her up when old age took her from me. But IT'S NOT TIME YET!" He screamed the last, rage taking him. "How long Compton? How long do these miserable blood bags normally live? 70, 80 years? That means we still have 50 years left! These pathetic excuses for life all around us will go on for decades more, but my beautiful wife is dead in the blink of an eye. WHY!" Suddenly he was up taking hold of the full length mirror near the bed and hurling it into the wall.

"She is MINE! How can she die when I still live?" The arm chair next to the window was his next victim sailing effortlessly into dresser across the room from it.

"Eric, I know. I too would give anything for her to live. Anything! Even if it meant watching her love you for the rest of her life." I said it quitely but when he stopped mid rage to look at me I knew he'd heard. His hands went down to his sides and he looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. Suddenly there was comprehension in his eyes. I seized the moment even though I was worried that a single wrong word could send him back into maddness. "Eric we must bury her." His whole body seemed to shake just once and then he got himself under control. He nodded at me but said nothing.

"Pam and Thalia have apprehended the man who did this. They have him at the warehouse." Suddenly it was if a fire had been lit behind his eyes. He smiled the most sinister, blood curdlingly malevolent smile I have ever seen, and I have to say I was happy to see it. He walked passed me, out of the bedroom without another word.

"Pam, do what needs doing here. I will be at the warehouse. I will not be back for several nights."

"Yes Eric." I heard her say, and then the front door slammed shut. A moment later I felt Pam's presence behind me. "Thank you," It was so low I almost missed it. But I looked over at her and smiled weakly in acknowledgement.

The next night we burried Sookie in the cemetary between our two houses. Right between her Grandmother and her Father. Exactly where I knew she would want to be. There was no service of course, but in the end her friends where with her. We could not let anyone beyond this little group know that she was dead. If the human authorities got involved there would be to many sticky questions to answer. And after all, Eric was still torturing her murderer as we lowered her into the ground. When I found out what happened last night I had wanted to go with Eric and help send the blood bag that did this to his death. But after our conversation I knew that was no longer my place. She was his, not by our rules, not by their their pleding with the knife, but by the will of her own heart and that meant that he alone had the right to avenge her death.

My place was here with the others who had loved her, making sure that she was layed peacefully to her eternal rest. In the end six of us were with her, Pam, myself, her brother, Sam Merlotte, Alcide Herveaux, and Calvin Norris. No one said anything but we each silently said our goodbyes and placed flowers above her unmarked grave. Since Sookie could have no headstone I took it upon myself to make sure that her grave was tended and not forgotten. I am not the only one that still comes here, but I am the one that comes most often, Eric and I, I should say.

At first the pain was so great that I felt that I might not be able to stand it. Whatever show of strength got me through the confrontation at Eric's house seemed to leave my body completely as we lowered Sookie's coffin into the dirt. In the decade after her death I felt an almost constant, overwhelming saddness that never seemed to give me reprieve. But as time went on, and as always seems to happen even when you think it cannot, I began to heal. I let Judith love me and began to open my heart to her in ways that would not have been possible for me if Sookie had lived. Eventually I began to truly love her back and to find again the kind of happiness that I only so briefly experienced with my Sookie. I continued to tend to Sookie's grave as though it were sacred ground, and to me it was. It gave me a continuing connection to her and to my memories of her, while never allowing me to forget that that time in my life was over. Eventually one day I realized that so much time had passed that even if Sookie had lived a full and happy life she would still be dead by now and somehow that realization was the one that completely and totally freed me.

I had loved her deeply, intensely, and fully. I had lost her completely and utterly to another man. But even if I had had my fairytale it would still be over now. Sookie's time was over, but my existance continued.

I placed the handful of roses that I had picked from her Grandmother's garden between the headstones of Adele Stackhouse and Corbitt Stackhouse, right over the spot where Sookie layed. I stood up, inhaled the fresh sents of the summer twilight and headed back to my house, to Judith, and to the future, feeling for the first time in 50 years, true peace.


	6. Chapter 6

_Aurthors Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has reveiwed and favorited this story. I am so grateful. This is my first story so I'm still a little new to the posting process. I apologize for any weirdness with the chapters. Again thank you all. I'm so honored!_

_Disclaimer: I own nothing_

Eric's POV

Vampires do not dream in the way that humans do, but we do dream. When we rest for the day we experience nothing, we are truly dead. But in the moments between the last rays of the sun and the full glory of the night we often slip into a state between death and conciousness where we can dream.

My dreams are always of her. Sometimes they are flights of fancy where we lived a happy life and she finally allowed me to turn her and keep her forever. Sometimes they start as memories but end differently than the real events, and sometimes, as it is tonight, it is the vivid recollection of a memory so complete and exquisitely detailed that it is easy to let my mind do as it wishes and allow myself to believe that it is actually happening.

I open my eyes and she is lying on her back on the pillow next to me catching her breath. The bedsheet has slipped down to her waist and the light from the fireplace in my bedroom sets her skin glowing with health and happiness. I smile to myself, if I must relive a memory than I am happy that it is this one. Happy to be back in the night when she told me she would be mine for as long as she lived.

"Was that to your satisfaction Lover?" I chuckle. She looks over at me with a lopsided grin and smacks my arm playfully.

"I'm quite sure I don't need to answer that!" She laughs turning on to her side on the pillow to face me. I love moments like this when we are easy and playful together. Of course I like moments like the one we just had too, when we're rough and driven to please each other with a singlemindedness that makes our souls one even as are bodies are already joined.

Sookie reaches out and strokes my cheek with her hand and a frown mars her beautiful face. It seems our playful moment has been shortlived. I feel her emotions sinking into something like unhappiness as she looks at me and I am immediately worried.

"What's wrong lover?" I whisper it, so afraid to spook her. As though she is a frightened mare that might bolt from me if I am to loud or my moves to sudden. These moments I hate. Why must they always pop up to ruin what should be joyful between us.

"Honey, I..." She hesitates for a moment looking deep into my eyes and then seems to screw up the courage to say what's on her mind. "Are you happy?" It's the silliest question I've ever heard. I am happier now than I have been any night in the last 1000 years. How can she ask me this? I don't know what she's getting at but I can only answer her truthfully. Our bond would allow her to know a lie before it was even half out of my mouth.

"Utterly and completely," I say, The truth it may be, but it only seems to make her more unhappy. I reach out and run my hand down her arm until I have her tiny hand in mine. "Please tell me what's wrong? I am so happy and I want for you to be happy too." With me, I add silently. I want you to be happier with me than with any other being on the planet so that you will never even think of leaving me. So that you will allow me to turn you and keep you for all time.

"Sometimes I just can't believe it is all." She says with another deeper frown.

"Believe what?"

"That you could be happy with me." She breaks eye contact with me and looks down at the small space between our bodies on the bed. She continues while staring at the sheet. "I mean... well, what I mean is that, you've seen so much of the world. You know so much. You've lived for so long, so long Eric. I can say the number but I truly have no concept of what it must be to see a 1000 years go by. And after everything that you've seen, everything that you've done, all the things you know, you'd be happy to spend years and years of your existance with a poor, white trash, waitress from podunk Louisianna who can't ever begin to be your intellectual or physical equal? How can you want that? How can you be happy about that?" I can hear by her voice that she is close to tears and it breaks my heart. I hate, HATE how the pathetic bloodbags that have surrounded her her whole life have made her feel so worthless, so unwanted. It is THEY who are undeserving to be around her. THEY who are unworthy to bask in the warm light of her smile, to look on the exquisite perfection of her body, to hear the sweetness of her voice, to recieve the endless kindness and compassion that she offers them. They have made her feel that she is nothing, but I will show her that such a one as her is worth more than a thousand of their pathetic lives.

"You are right Sookie." She looks up at me and I see panic in her eyes. She thinks I am about to tell her that I agree with her horrible assesment of herself. "I _**have**_ been around for longer than you can possibly imagine, I have seen whole civilizations simply cease to exist and wonders fade from this world. And I think that these experiences put me in a unique position to know what is of value in this world and what is not. And I am telling you right now, that you are the most valuable thing I have come across in a thousand years." She begins to interrupt me, but I put my finger across her mouth to silence her.

"I mean what I say. The love that you have made me feel, the joy that I have when I am with you. These are things I could not pay for with any amount of money, they are things that I gave up searching for hundreds of years ago, believing myself no longer capable of. That I have found it with you. The bravest, most loyal, most exquisitely beautiful woman I have layed eyes on in a millenia...well existance doesn't get better than that! So my love, I will not have you speak such ill about yourself again. Do you understand me? If you cannot see your perfection for yourself than at least trust that I would never give a woman who was not utterly unique and utterly special the place I have given you in my life or my heart. No one else has ever had them Sookie. Not when I was human and not since I was turned. In a 1000 years you are the only woman who has ever made me fall in love." A single tear falls from her eyes and I do not wait for more to come. I wrap my arms around her and crush her to me, intent upon showing her my love.

She pulls away after one long breathtaking kiss and looks deeply into my eyes. "You mean it don't you?" She says it as if she can't believe what I have told her. I would laugh if I knew she wouldn't take it offensively. What I have just told her I have been trying to tell her for almost 3 years. It is she who would not hear it, not I who did not feel it. Instead I just nod solomnly.

"I have never meant anything more. I would not give up what I have found with you for money, for glory, for fame, and certainly not for the charms of a lesser woman. And believe me Lover, next to you they are ALL lesser women."

"Eric, no one has ever made me feel more loved or more important than you have. I know I've made a lot of mistakes with us. But you know I want only you, right? Only you for the rest of my life." Now it is my turn to choke up, no small feat when one neither eats nor breathes but I manage it just the same. I pull myself together quickly though. Our lives are not normal, and we will probably never have a human wedding ceremony, we will most definitely never grow old together, and we will certainly not have children together. But we have this moment, and I wish to make vows to her right now so that she will never doubt the depth or the senscerity with which I love her again.

"My Love I accept you. For the rest of your life. And I will honor the promises I made to you so long ago. I will have you and no other at my side, and all those who owe me fealty will honor you." I kiss her hard and deep and am about to take her under me when she pushes me back, locking eyes with me.

"I don't know what the future holds, I don't know if I will ever want to be anything but human, but I do know that I will never, NEVER love another man. I want you and everything that you are, always." The last is said softly and finally she does allow me to pull her to me completely. My heart is so full with love, and now I feel the overwhelming need to show her how much I can love, how deeply I can feel, how utterly I am hers.

I kiss her hard allowing all the passion and longing that I held back those many many months to be released. All that time when she pushed me away, when she flaunted another man under my nose, when she took me back to her bed but still denied me her heart, it's over now, I have won her. Sookie wraps her arms around me and kisses me back, her own passion rising to meet mine.

I take her underneath me and look down at my beautiful bonded. She is everything I have ever wanted and tonight she is finally completely mine! I kiss her hard on the mouth one more time and then let my lips begin to explore the lush softness of her neck. Let my tongue dip in and taste the delicious hollow between her collar bones, and then I allow both to devour her exquisite pillow soft breasts. Kissing both rounded mounds over and over again until I come to the sweet blush pink nipple crowning each. I take one in my mouth and begin to suck gently as my hands venture further south scouting ahead so my lips will know how to follow. Sookie begins to writhe underneath me arching her back and pushing her breast farther into my mouth. She moans incoherently and the deep raspy sound makes my head swim and my cock ache. I have had her once already tonight and yet I feel as though I'm starving for her, as though I will die if I do not sink my fangs into her soft breasts and my cock into her dripping core.

The hand not supporting my weight has found the juncture between her thighs and softly begins to carress her most secret place, parting her folds and rubbing firmly on her sweet nub. As I feel the wetness accumulating there my mouth is finally tempted to leave her breasts and continue the journey. My fangs have been down since the moment she said she would live the rest of her life only with me, and now I allow them to scrape gently across her ribs, to nibble lightly at the soft place just above her hip bone. My tongue takes a detour to dip into her navel and then, then I am there, face to face with heaven itself.

I look up at her and find her watching me through hooded eyes. My little Lover knows what I like. She smiles almost shyly at me as I lower my head to her curls and inhale deeply. The sweet, dark scent of her there robs me of my last coherent thought and suddenly I am devoring her like an animal, pushing my face into her folds, letting my fingers enter her roughly, driving her body to the edge of the cliff as fast as my tongue will take her. She starts to chant my name over and over and I know that she is so close, one more bit of stimulation and she will climax. I am only to happy to give it to her. Continuing the rythm of my fingers inside her I turn my head slightly to the right and sink my fangs into the flesh of her thigh. My bite is all she needed and she cums screaming my name, her hands flying down to hold my head to her thigh, offering me as much of her sweet blood as I desire.

I lick the wound on her thigh closed as her breathing begins to return to normal, and then I lay myself on top of her completely and enter her in one long slow thrust. Despite the many orgasms she has already had tonight she still gasps as my length invades her. But there is no pain and no discomfort, instead I feel only bliss from her through our bond, as though my cock was the missing peice of her soul. We move together in a strong steady rythm knowing exactly what to do to please one another. Sookie wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and looks deeply into my eyes.

For a time we say nothing, but then we don't have to. At moments like this the bond between us is open completely and our love for eachother is undisguisable. It takes only a short while and suddenly we are both falling over the edge together. Sookie begins to chant in my ear "so good, so good, sogoodsogoodsogood" until finally she just crys out incoherently in her pleasure. Her pleasure brings mine, and I call out her name as I spill into her and feel her body contracting around me.

When we both can think, and see, and hear again, I roll over onto my side and pull her to me. I have stopped marveling at how this can be so perfect every single time. I merely accept the truth of it now, and enjoy it.

"Eric?" Sookie whispers from the crook of arm.

"Hmmm?" I respond still not quite able to talk.

"It was always you." I look down at her now, an eyebrow cocked, asking for her to explain further . "It was always you. I never loved Quinn, not even close. But you didn't remember and I was so alone and so angry at you. I did it to hurt you. To hurt us both maybe, you for not being able to remember and me for not being able to forget. But when I was with him I knew I couldn't love him. I tried to very hard, but I already loved you. I'm sorry I hurt you."

"No more thoughts about the past Lover. There is only the future now. Our furture." So I thought.


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer: I own nothing :)_

Eric's POV

(50 years after Sookie's death)

As night falls completely I come out of my dream. Where once there would have been weak and pathetic tears upon waking to realize that it was just another dream, now there is only anger.

Anger at her for being so selfish, so childish that she willingly chose to remain human, to put me through the hell of losing her. She claimed to love me, but how can you truly love a person if you would so easily abandon them to the hell I have lived in for the last 50 years.

And Intense almost unbearable anger at myself for allowing her the choice. I am a VAMPIRE! I have never given anyone the choice of life or death. And yet I let a silly, stupid girl have such power over me. Such control that I let her choose to leave me. I should have turned Sookie that night in Jackson. I loved her, that was enough. Her wishes should never have come into it. If I had done it then, she would be here with me now, not rotted to dust in the ground.

But I didn't. I convinced myself that to truly love her was to let her freely choose. I was a fool, and now after 5 decades of grief I hate her every bit as much as I still love her. And love her I do. I know now that I will never be free of her. I will never have peace from the ache deep within me to see her again, to kiss her again, to love her body again, to talk to her, to laugh with her. No, instead I will go on and on walking each night on an endless path with no destination; always looking behind me wishing that I might see her there in the distance trying to catch up to me.

There are nights when I do not even know why I continue to exist. It would have been so much easier to simply meet the sun, certainly it is what they all expected of me after I completely lost my mind the night of her death. But I could not take my own life for one simple reason: Pam. The fact of the matter is that I love my child to much to ever do to her what Sookie has done to me. I cannot choose to leave her when I have the means to remain. Nor could I reward the loyalty and love my child showed me in the aftermath of Sookie's death by killing myself. She worked so hard to keep my alive, sometimes at great personal risk to herself, I could not turn my back on her. I am shamed when I remember that most of the danger to her came from me. The one being who she should never have to fear.

I did not attend Sookie's funeral. I could not watch her go into the ground never to come out. Instead I honored her in the best way I knew how, by extracting a long and agonizing death from the man that seperated us.

When I arrived at the warehouse Thalia was wating for me at the front entrance. "Master," She said and bowed low.

"How long has he been here?" I ask, not really caring, except that I hope she hasn't damaged him to much already. If she has then there will be less for me to play with.

"I found him earlier in the evening. In his apartment. He was purchasing something with Sookie's credit card when I knocked on the door." I feel the rage in me well up. I try to tamp it down for only a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes of coherancy and then I can give myself over to it.

"You may go." I tell her. Thalia nods and takes off into the night. A slow, dark smile creeps over my features as I begin to imagine some of the more creative things I will do to him. I enter the warehouse and find that Thalia has tied the man's hands above his head securing him to an over head beam. His feet are off the floor and so he swings slowly in the slight draft that wafts through the warehouse. Otherwise he is unharmed. He is gagged as well but makes no attempt to escape or to try to speak. Clearly Thalia procured his cooperation through glamour rather than force, and has left him that way. Excellent!

I walk up to him and examine him, and I feel the rage welling within me again. This time I let it out. He is nothing, nobody. The man, the putrid sack of blood that stole my beloved from me is nothing more than a common criminal, and a fairly stupid one at that.

Somehow this is even worse. If Sookie's murder had been the plot of some evil supernatural: a fairy with a grudge, a were pack, a plotting vampire, I think I could have handled it better. If it had been deliberate and purposeful I could have stood it, but this, this was unbearable. My love's death was nothing more than bad timing and unluckiness. If the waitress she was waiting for had arrived on time, if there had been a parking spot in front of the club, she would still be here with me.

Instead she parked in the badly lit lot accross the street from the back of the bar and became the random victim of a mugger with a knife. She never saw her death or knew that it was coming. If I know Sookie she had her shields up and never heard his mind. She was simply alive one moment and not the next, all so he could have the few dollars in her wallet and her credit card. No price can ever be attached to what this man has stollen from me. So now I will take from him the only thing he has of value to offer me: his life. But he will not be as lucky as Sookie, to live one moment and not the next, no he will see his death, know it intimately, he will beg it of me before we are done, and we will not be done for quite some time.

I come up infront of him so that we are face to face and I look deep into his eyes. I allow myself access to his mind and lift the glamour Thalia has placed on him. When he realizes what his new situation is I see terror in his eyes. He begins to beg and plead for his life around the gag in his mouth.

"Do you know what I am?" I ask him quietly. He stops begging and really looks at me for the first time. I smile at him with all the hatred in my dead heart and allow him to see my fangs. His only response is a frightened nod of his head.

"The woman you murdered three nights ago was my wife."

Those are the last words I speak to him. He was stronger than he looked. He lasted four nights. I couldn't believe my luck in that regard. After all once I started to play with him I got a little carried away. Truly excellet torture requires the torturer to remain at least somewhat objective. You have to know when to back off and when to lay in. You need to understand and remember the difference between that which is merely painful and that which can cause vital damage. My rage and my sorrow took me over and truly I don't even remember half of the things I did to him. But his mindless screaming told me that I was doing it right.

When it was finally over and he hung there as dead as my beloved, I looked around me and wondered what was next. I had my vengence but now there was nothing. Nothing but time, endless time without her stretching in front of me. The anger, and the pain welled up in me again but this time they had no outlet.

My last act was to set him on fire and the warehouse with him. I had used this place for interrogations since I became Sherriff 70 years ago, but now I knew that I could never come back here. Could never look at these walls again.

After making sure that the place would burn to the ground without interference from the local human authoritites I made my way to the only place that I would ever want to be again. The Bon Temps cemetary, where my love layed in what I hoped was peace.

The evening was fine and I made good time, landing in the cemetary only 20 minutes later. Picking up a shovel that had been layed against one of the trees by the cemetary workers, I made my way through the headstones knowing exactly the location of my destination. The year that Sookie and I had had together in peace and in love we had shared a great deal of our pasts with eachother, our sorrows, our joys. And we began to include eachother in our every day routines. When we stayed here in Bon Temps we would often clip roses from her Grandmother's garden and walk down through the cemetary to lay them over the graves of her Grandmother and her parents. She wanted me to know them she said. At the time it had warmed my heart that she was including me in every part of her life.

I arrived there now and looked at the freshly turned ground between the headstones of her Grandmother and her father, knowing without needing to be told that this was where she layed. I suppose a sane person wanting to be close to her would have walked past the cemetary to her little farmhouse and stayed there amongst her things and her sweet scent. I certainly could have. The light proof bedroom that we had shared many many nights was right there and her scent would be more strong there on the sheets and pillows than anywhere else. I had not stayed here in about a week but with my vampire senses I would have had no problem picking up my scent in the bed as well. If I were sane I would have gone there, layed in our bed and revelled in our combined scent for days until mine began to supercede hers. But I was not sane at that point, not even close. Why would I go to an empty home and lie in an empty bed when I could travel just a few more steps and lie with her?

I slid the shovel down into the earth and began to dig. With my heightened speed it didn't take more than four or five minutes to unearth her coffin. I wanted to be with her, but I did not want to get her dirty so I chose to lay on top of it instead of opening it. Dawn was still two hours away but there was no place I would rather have been so I quickly reburried us and lay down on top of her. What I felt was not happiness, I knew that I would never feel that again. But there was a kind of peace to be had there in the ground laying just above the woman who had made me love her with her beauty, her kindness, her fierceness, her sweet facinating mind, and her beautiful soul. As I waited for dawn to take me I felt the wood of her coffin beneath me and I whispered to her over and over again that I was here, that as I promised I would never leave her, and that I loved her even now. I would always love her no matter what happened.


	8. Chapter 8

_Authors note: I wanted again to thank everyone who has reviewed my story ,and put it on Alert and in their Favorites! Also I know I'm going really heavy on the angst- and it's not over yet, But I PROMISE this story has a happy ending. I could never leave Eric like this. :) _

_Warning: Below there is a tiny bit of extremely graphic content which skirts the line of consensual and non consensual. It's brief but I thought I should give fair warning._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing_

Pam's POV

I had hoped that extracting vengance from Sookie's murderer would be catharctic for my maker. That it might give him the closure he needed to move on. Whatever Bill said to him that night in his bedroom had seemed to lift him from the worst of his insanity, but I was still fearful for him, and every night of the four nights that Eric remained at the warehouse Alcide's weres patrolled the property an hour before dawn until just after sunset. There could be no doubt from the screams coming from the warehouse what was going on, but Sookie was a friend of their pack, and I believe that in their minds what Eric was doing was justice, not vengence, or perhaps justice as well as vengence. In any case they seemed happy to be there.

The bastard lasted four days. If I hadn't hated him for what he had done to my friend and to my maker I might have felt some respect for his tenacity. But there was only one way for it to end, and only a matter of time before he gave out. He was nothing but human after all.

After that my master gave every outward sign of being..."back to business" as they say. But that was just a good show for the powers that be and seems to remain so even to this day. I know that even now he still spends some nights in Bon Temps. At first I thought he was staying in Sookie's house. It seemed logical that if he wanted to be close to her that was where he would go. And her brother, over come with his own grief, seemed incapable of actually setting foot in the house and so was happy to let Eric use it.

I thought that if this didn't go on for too long it might even be a healthy way for him to get past his grief and move on. What I didn't realize until I decided to join him one night was that he was not sleeping at the house. When I arrived the lights were off and the doors locked. I thought this strange since Eric's car was parked right there, so I began to search around when I encountered Bill. It seemed we all had similar ideas when it came to purging our grief.

When I asked Bill if he knew where Eric was he nodded in the affirmative, but did not immediately offer an answer. I was trying to be more patient with Bill since I supposed I really did owe him for whatever little magic he worked with Eric , but I was beginning to buckle under the strain of dealing with my friends death, my maker's instability, and the ever present fear that any little thing might push him back over the edge. So I snapped at Bill to answer me already.

Bill's face contorted, but not into the rage I would have expected at being spoken to so. It contorted into pity. That was when he told me that though Eric parked at the farmhouse, when he bothered to drive, he was actually sleeping in the cemetary. Most nights Eric walked from the house to her grave, dug up the earth on top of it, burried himself, and then spent the day resting on top of her coffin. At least Bill hoped that he was resting on top of it, but since he pretended not to know what Eric was doing and never interacted with him when Eric came to the cemetary or questioned him about it afterwards, there was really no way of knowning for sure.

After our little conversation I left, no longer feeling as though I could remain there. Instead I headed back to Shreveport driving far slower than I ever had in order to make the time alone last. This was bad, bad news. But it seemed at least that if he was lying in the ground with Sookie than he wasn't meeting the sun, so that was something.

I chose not to say anything about it, and tried to simply be there to help my maker in anyway I could. To say he was difficult to deal with would be understating matters to the point of stupidity. Without Sookie to love him Eric began to change.

At first he would not feed from anyone, prefering to drink bagged blood or even True Blood. When I gently asked him one night if he would like me to bring him a donor, he overturned his desk in rage and screamed at me that he had promised Sookie his fidelity, did I think that he would so easily betray her in that way? Okay, too soon then.

It went on like that for about 20 years. Eric performing all of his duties as Sheriff to the tee, being outwardly the same vampire he had always been, but never feeding from a living human and always sleeping in the ground with his beloved. But as time went by and anger began to replace sorrow the beast in him seemed to gain free reign until one night he chose two pretty brunette fangbangers and brought them back to his office.

I wanted to be happy. The sounds coming from his office proved that he was moving on, acting more like his old self, the one from before Sookie. This was good. This was progress.

My hope was shortlived. While I can say I don't think he's actually killed any of them, it is not the same as before. He is almost empty inside, there is nothing left but hate and rage. While the old Eric had also used women for sex and blood, he always enjoyed it for what it was. We are vampires after all we LIVE for sex and blood. This Eric does not enjoy it, and he makes sure that his partners don't either. He is always cruelest to the blonds. As if it is their own personal fault that they are not Sookie.

Tonight is no exception. I open his office door carying a stack of invoices that need his signature. I could hear what was happening in here all the way down the hall of course, but he couldn't care less if I see what he's doing or not.

He has a pettit blond bent face down over his desk, his large hand practically crushing her head into the wood, as he rams himself into her from behind. Her neck is bleeding where he bit her but didn't care enough to seal the wound and she is quite clearly crying from the pain of both the bleeding wound and the vicious way he's fucking her. He is far to large for her and probably didn't even bother to prepare her.

I don't look him in the eye and I don't say anything. I just drop the invoices on the part of his desk that isn't rapidly filling up with the fangbangers blood and walk out of the office back out into the club. Honestly I don't know how he still finds fangbangers stupid enough to fuck him. Any woman with two brain cells to rub together would see that behind the beautiful sea colored eyes there isn't a single shred of humanity, and even if they are to stupid to see that it's not a secret that the owner of Fangtasia doesn't play nice with his food. Yet they still go with him, to enamoured of the beautiful face and magnificent body to understand that he feels nothing but pain and he will make them feel nothing but pain too.

10 minutes later the little blond emerges from Eric's office limping, tears staining her face, and a tissue pressed tightly to the wound on her neck. She doesn't look around, and doesnt talk to anyone. She just grabs her purse from the table where she was sitting and runs out the of the club. I sigh deeply and prepare to do my least pleasant task of the night. My least pleasant task of most nights. At top speed I run out into the parking lot catching up to the woman as she's trying to fish her car keys out of her purse one handed.

"Excuse me?" I say in my sweetest voice. She looks up at me and I have her mind almost instantly. "Good girl," I say my voice returning to normal. "You had a wonderful time this evening with my master, you loved it so much you begged him not to heal your wounds so that you could keep his marks. Go home, take a hot bath, and find another bar to frequent." She nods dumbly, gets into her car, and drives away, hopefully never to return.

An hour later Eric comes out of his office. He looks over at me as he heads to the door. "Have someone clean my desk." With that he is gone. I hear his car turn over and peel out of the parking lot. Hopefully practically raping one fangbanger was enough for him tonight, I won't have time before dawn to intercept another one if he decides to get "take out" on the way home.

Felicia and I close up the bar and I head home to fall into bed and try to forget about another bad night. Honestly I haven't grown a conscience since Sookie's death. I never had one of those and it certainly isn't going to form now. I truthfully don't care what he does to the useless vermin that come to the bar. I would let him drain them all if it would make things better, but it doesn't. It only seems to make it worse. Each night he becomes harder, crueler, more dead inside. The man I knew as my maker no longer exists. How, HOW could a single tiny little human so utterly destroy one such as Eric? Why can he not get over her? Why can he not see that there is still so much to enjoy? I must, must find some way to help him, or I will lose him. Things cannot got on like this much longer.


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's note: I feel that I should preface this chapter by saying that the content below is of the extremely graphic, mature, an sexual nature. Everything is consensual but just barely. Also this is the end of the angst. From the next chapter on things begin to go better for our Eric. You'll see when/if you read this chapter, I've got nowhere to go but up._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing_

Eric's POV

Another night drags on and I am beginning to wonder if I should not sell the bar and move on. Nothing here matters to me anymore. I can find vermin to feed and fuck anywhere and I am growing tired of looking at the faces of this particular crop of useless blood bags. Being Sherriff no longer holds any interest for me. Area 5 is calm and peaceful and that means my job has been reduced to nothing more than an endless, monotonous litney of mind numbing paperwork and not much more. Pam and I barely speak anymore and though that more than anything smarts just a bit, I do not have the energy to try and fix things between us. In any case Pam is 250 years old, it's time she cut the cord. I am just about to pick dinner for the night, when Pam approaches my table.

" I must speak with you." She says in a low voice.

" I am about to eat, it will have to wait." I crane my neck around Pam and smile ever so slightly at the tall redhead sitting a few tables away who has been staring at me all night. It's all the encouragement she needs and all of the sudden she is up out of the chair and making her way over to me.

"It cannot wait," Pam says still not moving. I am losing my patience. I give her an icy glare and stand up.

"It will have to. Go back to your duties and I will call you when I am done." By this time the redhead has made her way to me, and without another word I usher her back to my office, leaving Pam still standing infront of my now empty chair.

I lead the girl inside and close the door behind me locking it for once so Pam will not feel the need to interupt. She perches on the edge of my desk and smiles at me almost shyly. She has very big blue eyes and that shy smile, it reminds me of another shy smile, another pair of blue eyes that were so big that you could lose yourself in them. Instead of making me wistful or making me sad it inscenses me. I want to scream and curse and rip my hair out. Anything to banish these fucking memories. But it does no good. So I swallow my screams and decide to work off my anger with the girl smiling to innocently infront of me; expecting that sex with a vampire will be a fantasy come true. I sincerely doubt she is into the kind of fantasy I am about to play out.

I say nothing to her as I slowly close the small distance between us. When I am right in front of her I take each side of the top of her leather dress in one of my hands, and before she can ask what I am about to do I rip it off of her body. In less than two seconds I have done the same to her bra and panties. She stands in front of me now shocked and naked except for her stillettoes. Her body is not right of course, her nipples are the wrong color, her legs to long, she is entirely to skinny. She is just as worthless as all the others.

Before she can protest I unzip my pants and shove them down just enough for my errection to spring free. Then I place a hand on her shoulder and push her down to her knees. Her face is now level with my cock and I look down at her coldly.

"Open wide," I say before fisting my hand in her hair and pushing her foward. I fuck her mouth for a few minutes forcing her head up and down on my shaft until she gags on me. Then I pull out of her mouth, and force her down onto the floor. Normally I take them from behind. Trying desperately to super impose another face on the annonmous cunt beneath me. But tonight I want to look, I want to see that it is not her. I want to prove to myself that I am done with these weak, pathetic, womanish yearnings. If she could leave me, then I can leave her. So I flip the redhead over so that we are face to face and part her legs roughly. She smiles at me again and I am almost revolted to realise that little miss shy smile likes it rough. I smile back at her, but mine lacks any warmth or kindness. We will see how rough she likes it then.

I lean back on my knees and look over her body. She just lays there smiling at me wantonly, her bare breasts up in the air and her legs parted, showing me every centimeter of her glistening pussy. As I watch her she brings one of her hands down to her folds and begins to play with herself, rubbing her clit and dipping into her cunt now and then to spread her wetness around, no doubt believing that I like the show. I reach down and palm one of her breasts, wrapping my fingers around it and squeezing just hard enough to leave a bruise. She cries out and archs her back pushing her breast more firmly into my hand, and starts to work herself faster. I lean down so that I am above her along the length of our bodies without them touching. I begin to savagely pinch and twist her dark brownish/red nipples. It causes her to moan and thrust her hips up off the floor trying to make contact with my cock. I smile at her again, a cold devoid smile and the stupid bitch actually runs the hand that had been working herself down my chest and begins pumping my cock with it! I think I might actually kill this one.

Without wasting another minute I slap her hand away from my cock and surge forward entering her in one thrust. She cries out and wraps her too long legs around me and I start a brutal rythym, plunging into her hard and then pulling back out all the way to do it again as fast as possible. She moans and screams beneath me as though she's never been fucked so well before. I couldn't care less at this point, the desire to fuck and to feed has taken over and as I pound into her mercelessly I bend my head and bite the side of her breast. She screams in shock at the pain of my bite, but I ingnore it. I suck and suck and again I think that I might actually enjoy killing this one. But cleaning up the mess will be more trouble than it's worth so I stop drinking and just keep fucking her.

For all her body is displeasing, her cunt is tight and wet and for the few minutes more that I pound into her I feel a reprieve from the pain of the past decades. There is nothing but this, nothing but the hot wet tightness around my cock. I feel her begin to climax. She starts to chant mindlessly "so good, so good, sogoodsogoodsogood," and for a moment I forget where I am. Forget that her voice is wrong, and her smell is wrong, that tight as she is this is not the sheath that always seemed as though it was made for me and me alone, and I come, forcefully spilling myself within her and calling out her name.

"Sookie!"

Only when it's done do I realize what I have said. And for the first time in 50 years I don't feel hate or anger, I don't yearn and I don't long. I feel nothing but defeat. I am so lost without her, will I never come out of this darkness?

"It's Susie honey, but trust me that's not a problem." Little miss shy smiles had to pick that exact moment to open her worthless mouth. It takes all of my self restraint, somthing I have in short supply these days, not to punch her in the face so hard my fist goes through her skull to the floor.

I bolt away from her as though she is made of silver. She disgusts me and I want nothing more to do with her. And if she opens her foul mouth one more time and calls me "Honey" I will not be responsible for my actions. I pick up her torn dress and underwear and throw them on top of her as she is still lying naked, spread eagle on the floor.

"Get the fuck out and don't ever speak to me again." I say as I tuck my flaccid member back in my pants and zip them up. That was the extent of my undress and so I turn and sit down in my chair to do some work.

Susie shy smiles seems stunned for all of a minute before what I said seems to penetrate. She stands, putting on her torn dress and holding it closed with both of her hands and farely runs out of my office almost knocking into Pam and loosing her grip on her ruined dress in the process.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Eric's POV

"You wanted to see me?" I say to Pam without looking up from the invoices on my desk. I hear her enter the room, closing the door behind her and relocking it. That get's my attention and I finally look up, raising my eyebrow at her. She sits down in one of the guest chairs and looks at me for a long moment before speaking.

"I found Amelia." She says as though this should be some sort of explanation all by itself.

"Good for you, I suppose. I can't believe she's still alive." My voice takes on a bored tone and I go back to perusing the papers she wants me to sign. It is easier to sign off on liquor invoices than to contemplate the continued existence of yet another worthless human whose meaningless life has managed to exceed that of my wife's.

"She is old of course, and very unwell, but she is still a powerful witch Eric. Perhaps even more so now that she is older and more experienced." My head bolts up at that and my eyes narrow into slits as they stare at Pam. I have never liked witches, especially not the powerful ones.

"If you have a point come to it." When did our relationship come to this? I may be devestated, I may still be grieving, I may not be doing it all that well, but I still love my child. Next to Sookie, Pam is the most important being in my world. Why can I not seem to show it? We used to laugh together. We used to enjoy each other's company. Again my mask of anger seems to briefly crack and I am left feeling defeated and lost.

"Amelia is dying of bone marrow cancer. It is supposedly very painful and she is tired of the constant equally painful treatments. I spoke to her of your... continued unhappiness and she was willing to strike a bargain with me." Again my eyebrow shoots up.

"What would that be?" It's odd to feel interest in something after so long. It's just a conversation, Pam could end by saying that she will get a pair of vintage Louboutin's in exchange for a vial of blood or some other trite shit. But for some reason I suddenly want to know where she is going with this.

"She has created a spell for me, one which requires a great deal of magic and a great deal of energy. She will execute it in exchange for my ending her life quickly and without pain when it is done."

"What kind of spell?" I am hanging on her words now and again I'm struck by the phenomena of being interested in something other than hating Sookie and wanting to hurt the women I fuck.

"She says she can send you back to that night. To prevent Sookie's death. Will you meet with her?" I have seen many, many things in my life and found out that a great deal of what narrow minded humans believe to be mere fiction in fact exisits. But a possiblity such as this never even occured to me. In my old age it seems that I too have become settled in my ways. Believing that what is simply is and cannot be changed.

A new emotion comes into my heart: gratitude. It swells along with the long dormant feelings of love that I have always had for my child. I have been cold to her, unkind to her. I have ingnored her and pushed her away first in my grief and then in my hatred, and yet she has done this thing for me. Why?

It has been a long time since I've really paid attention to the bond that we share as maker and child but I probe it now and all I find is hope, love, and impatience for my answer.

I rise from my seat and walk around to sit on edge of my desk in front of her, my leg brushing against her knee. It's the first physical contact we've shared in a long time and I hear her shocked intake of breath.

"I will child." With that I lean down, my hands taking each of her upper arms, lifting her out of the seat, and into my embrace. I hold her there for a few minutes stroking her hair and just enjoying the feeling of being connected to her again. And then I lean down and look into her eyes. "Thank you," I say simply and brush my lips gently across hers. She looks up at me and smiles a real, genuine smile and the arms around my waist give a me a little squeeze.

"Pam, I have been...I have not been..." I trail off unable to find the right words. I am not accustomed to making apologies and clearly this one intends to stick in my throat. Yet this is truly so much more than I deserve from her. Understanding both my unspoken apology and my unspoken question she answers without demanding that I debase myself with further words of remorse.

"I have been searching for a way to help you for a very long time but there were so few who had the power to help, and even fewer who had the will." She looks as though she will say more about it but then thinks better. "I will make arrangements for us to travel to her tomorrow night." With that she leans forward on her tip toes, brushes her lips across mine one last time and runs out of the office to make our plans. As for me. I simply sit. Sit and try to absorb all she has told me. I try not to feel hope and excitement. Witches are not to be trusted after all. This could all be for naught.


	11. Chapter 11

_Authors note: Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review my story, to put it on alert, and to put it in your favorites! _

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Eric's POV

We arrive at the Sunny Gardens assisted living facility in New Orleans just after 10 pm the next night. I have not seen the sun in over a thousand years of course, but even I can tell that naming this place after it is the worst kind of false advertising. There are no gardens to speak of and instead of the warm light that I imagine coming from the sun everything here is glaring white and depressing gray, lit by the same harsh florescent bulbs that you would find in a hospital.

Actually this place resembles more a hospital than anything else. The staff wear stark white scrubs and the place reeks of industrial cleaner, sick people, and death. I never bothered to pay much attention to Amelia when she was Sookie's roomate, but I do remember that her father was quite wealthy, surely she can afford to die in a better place than this?

Pam and I walk up to the reception area and Pam leans down to speak to the receptionist. "We're here to see Amelia Plimpton." The receptionist nods her head and buzzes for one of the orderlies to come out through an electronic door that is apparently designed to keep the denziens of Sunny Gardens in once they discover they've been dupped.

The young man, whose expression I would catagorize as "bored to the point of tears" motions for us to follow him. We walk down a long hall filled with open doorways. In each room are several elderly people, all clearly sick, many of whom my nose tells me will not live for much longer.

We round the hall and suddenly where there was only linolium floors before we hit carpet. As we walk down this hall I see that each room is inhabited by only one person and the rooms are painted in soothing pastel colors rather more like a hotel room than the depressing white hospital rooms from before. This must be where the people with money get to stay.

Amelia's room is apparently the last one down this hall and we stop at the door, our guide knocking quitely so as not to startle the extremely thin, pale, wrinkled woman lying in the bed reading a book.

"Mrs. Plimpton you have guests. Would you like me to stay?" Mrs. Plimpton looks up at the door and squints visably behind her already thick glasses, trying to see who her guests are. When she seems satisfied that she has correctly identified us she looks at the orderly and with a voice wizzended with age tells him he can go.

"I'm glad you came." She says looking over both of us. She seems to curl up a little on the bed as though she does not really want us to look at her much in return. Despite the fact that everyone knows vampires are unchanging, humans always seem to find it shocking, as though they really can't comprehend anything outside of their own little slice of reality.

We have only been here for a few minutes but I am beginning to grow impatient. This woman means as little to me as any of the fangbangers that surround me each night at the club. I have no desire to chit chat, I want to get down to business. However if I offend her she might withhold from me something that could be of inestimable value. So instead of losing my temper I allow Pam to do the talking.

"Amelia, Eric and I are intriqued by your proposal. However before we agree, would you explain exactly how this works?" Though Pam remains as "to the point" as ever her voice is soft, soothing, almost friendly. I know that she had a brief dalliance with this human when she lived with Sookie, and I find myself wondering if Pam is effected by the enormous and unpleasant changes in this woman's appearance.

It makes me wonder as well. Amelia was about 3 years younger than Sookie I think. That makes her 77 now. If Sookie had lived she would be 80 now. What would she have looked like? Would she be frail and small and old just like this? The answer to that is of course yes. If she never allowed me to turn her she would probably look almost exactly like this. I find the changes in Amelia to be intensly unpleasant to look upon. Would I have felt the same way about Sookie?

It's a disturbing thought. My mental image of Sookie is frozen at 28. At the height of her beauty. I remember in precise detail the silky perfection of her long golden hair. The smooth soft plains of her unlined face. The bright glow of her lovely storm blue eyes. My hands twitch slightly when they remember caressing the firm, young skin of her body. Yet the truth is that I never felt anything for this human and I loved Sookie more than I have ever loved anything. If I could lay in bed beside her rotting corpse for three nights, and feel nothing but love and desire for her, than I doubt I could have been put off by wrinkles and white hair.

While my mind has been wondering, Amelia has reached down into the drawer of the night stand by her bed and produced a small vial of dirty looking liquid. She now looks up at us and begins to explain the spell she has created and the procedure invovled.

"You remember the date of Sookie's death right?" Amelia asks us both as she rolls the bottle between her wrinkled palms. I attempt not to snort, remembering that I need this woman's help.

"Yes," I answer. "I will never forget it...no matter how much I try. The anniversary of her death is in one week. Next Saturday. ." I say my voice becoming lower and more emotion filled as I near the end of my sentance.

"Good," she nods. "The procedure is very simple. Just before you go to your rest Saturday morning you must drink all of the contents of this vial. When you awake from your rest on Saturday night you will be in exactly the same spot 51 years ago. The spell will last for one night only from dusk till dawn. Your actual physical body that you inhabit now will be what goes back, which means that the you that is already there will be poking around doing whatever you were doing on that night. So the important thing is to get Sookie to saftey and get away without being seen by yourself, or anyone else. Let Sookie be confused if she must, better confused than dead, but don't tell her what's going on and don't interract with anyone you don't have to. And of course if you still own the same house you did back then don't go to rest there or you will wake up with your past self right beside you. It works the same way in reverse. When you go to your rest after saving Sookie you will simply wake up in the same spot back in the present the next night. Do you understand?" I nod at her.

"Good, then if all goes well I will expect you on Saturday night Pam. Are we agreed?" Pam and I both nod in the affirmative. Amelia leans over slowly as though every move is painful for her and hands me the vial. I take it from her and place it inside my jacket pocket next to my heart. I am almost overwhelmed by the hope that is flowing up out of me. But I just nod at Amelia one last time and Pam and I leave.


	12. Chapter 12

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Eric's POV

(The 51st anniversary of Sookie's death)

The Saturday morning of the anniversary of Sookie's death I chose to go to rest in one of my other homes. I keep it for property values and as a bolt hole but haven't ever actually slept here. It seemed like a reasonably good place to stay out of the way of all of our past selves.

I pulled the little vial out of my leather jacket, which was lying next to the bed, and looked at it. "I do spy a kind of hope, which craves as deperate an excecution as that is desperate which we would prevent...Take thou this vial, being then in bed and this distilled liquor drink thou off." I chuckled bitterly to myself and thought about everything I have done in the last 51 years. If Sookie could see how I have suffered the last half century I think she would find the parrallel to Romeo and Julliet fitting. With that thought I pop the cap on the vial and smell it. The scent of it is heavy with very strong magic. WIthout another thought I knock it back in one long draught. It is absolutely repulsive but it stays down which is encouraging. I feel lathargic and tired as the first rays of the sun light the sky. I pull on my jacket and lay down on the bed fully dressed, and let the sun take me under.

...

When my eyes next open I look around me. I am exactly where I was when I went to my rest, but I left the bedroom light on then and now it is off. I get up and leave the bedroom exiting the house. Again I find a difference. I drove here last night and parked my car in the garage. When I open the garage door now the car is gone.

I smile to myself, excitement beginning to creep up on me. I take to the sky and fly to Bon Temps. It's a little after 6:30 pm according to my watch. Sookie was working swing shift the night she died and won't be scheduled to leave until 8:00pm so I fly hurriedly to Merlotte's to intercept her. I will tell her any stupid story to get her to come with me, and if she insists on being stubborn then I will simply throw her over my shoulder and walk out. I will take her to Fangtasia, and command Pam as her maker not to let Sookie out of her sight until "I" take her to dinner later on tonight. That should make Sookie safe. I am so excited, so filled with joy. I can barely wait to see her.

But as I break into the clearing where Merlotte's stands I get unpleasant suprise. I land in the parking lot. Or rather I should say I land where the parking lot should be. But there is nothing here. No parking lot, no bar, just swampy woods and an empty clearing. Something has gone very very wrong. Merlotte's still exists in 2059, run by the Shifter's eldest son and his wife. So I have traveled somewhere in time, but when? Am I in the future, the past? When?

In the blink of an eye all of my hope and joy is replaced by the familiar feelings of anger, rage, and despair. How, How could I have believed that fucking witch? How could I have gotten myself into this situation? I knew she was incomptent decades ago. The man/cat living in the house was proof of that, and yet I let my hope blind me. Let myself believe that one wave of a hand, one taste of a vial of water could change everything. Could change all the heartache, all the suffering, all the meaningless wasted time. Did I really believe this would work? That I would save her? That we would be together for eternity? I am more fool than I thought I was.

I let an animalistic scream fill the dark emptiness of the night, and fall to my knees in the mud, spent, defeated, hopeless. After several minutes of wallowing in my despair, I pick myself up and decide to fly into the town, if that is still there, and find out when it is. My watch says that it is now 6:50. There is still a great deal of night left and I'm not sure what to do beyond that. If such a vital part of the spell went wrong, do the rest of the rules still apply? Will I still only have one night here, or am I stuck here? For how long? Good lord what have I gotten myself into?

Whenever I am, Bon Temps does in fact exist. I land just outside of the main store front area and walk out onto the street. Looking around I have to say that whatever the date is it doesn't look much different than the last time I saw it. Most of the same shops, the same useless white trash blood bags walking the streets, apparently this place is timeless.

After walking only a short way I see exactly what I'm looking for, the newspaper dispenser infront of the coffee shop. I take out my wallet, drop in the necessary change, and take out this mornings Shreveport Times. I look at the date and get a sick feeling in my stomache: November 10, 1997. I should probably start freaking out right now, but instead I actually take the time to be annoyed that the spell was off by such a random number as 11. I wanted to go back 51 years to the night of Sookie's death, instead I have been brought back 62. How does one even make a mistake like that?

I take a deep breath to calm myself and start to think about what I should do. It's 1997 which means that the Great Revelation has not yet taken place. For as long as I am here I will have to pretend to be human, wonderful. I can't recall with exact clarity what I was doing on this particular night 62 years ago, but in general I was running the business that I owned before Fangtasia. Actually I still own them both, but I was spending my time there. So the chances are pretty good that the past me is sitting in my office at that bar right now. One thing I can be sure of is that I never set foot in this podunk town until I met Sookie so if I stay here there is no chance of running into my past self or anyone else that would know me.

As I am running through this in my head, another thought bursts into my mind. It is 1997. Sookie is still alive! My dead heart lurches at that thought, my Sookie is still alive! I know that I should not contact her in anyway, but surely it would not cause any problems to simply find her and watch her. After all what I came here to accomplish is now impossible. I might as well get something out of it. That thought sours me though. I will never be able to save her now. When this night is over, assuming the pathetic witch didn't fuck up anything else, I will wake up tomorrow back in 2059 and Sookie will still be dead. Again I can not believe that I let myself get into such a mess. I shake myself again and decide that I will not waste a single second more of this evening thinking about it. To see her, hear her, be near her for even one night is more than I had before. I shouldn't waste this opportunity standing on a street corner in Bon Temps. I drop the paper carelessly on the ground and walk behind the coffee shop where I can take to the sky unseen.


	13. Chapter 13

_Discliamer: I own nothing..._

Eric's POV

My morbid streak seems to be ingrained now, as I choose to land not in the woods just around Sookie's house but in the Bon Temps cemetary. I land where her grave will sit in a scant 11 years. Though I probably didn't need the reassurance of it, I am glad to see more proof that in the here and now she is still alive. The spot where I am standing holds only two graves, that of Sookie's mother and father. Adele is not here and neither is Sookie.

I spend one more minute there looking at the spot where I have, or I guess, where I will spend so much of the next half century and I feel a renewed strength of purpose. I will, if only for one night see my Sookie again. With that I take off at run to the farmhouse.

As I break through the woods into Sookie's front yard I see that, as with everything else in this town, her house is not much different now than it will be when I meet her in 8 years. The driveway is badly in need of regravelling, the house could use a new coat of paint, and Sookie's old clunker has still seen better days. By the God's how old IS that peice of shit car?

I leave off my contemplation of the farmhouse to let my senses roam and get the lay of the land, as they say. There are lights on in the living room and I can hear the sound of the TV going. I smile to myself when I realize that Sookie is whatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It must be on actual network TV in this year.

Beyond the sound of the TV I can sense only one heartbeat in the house. A single human is inside. My heart skips a beat at that. If it is Sookie inside than she is alone. Where are her Grandmother and Jason? Well I guess I know the answer to at least half of that question. If it is 1997 than my Sookie is 16 years old. That would make Jason 20 and probably means that he is already living in his parent's house. That just leaves the Grandmother unaccounted for. As if in answer to my question I hear the house phone ring.

"Hi Gran. Is Mrs. Fortenbury feeling any better?" She asks.

"Sookie, hun, I think she's doing worse. I called to let you know that I'm gonna spend the night over here. Hoyt is trying his best but honestly I think he's coming down with it too. I think they'd both be more comfortable if I stayed the night." I hear her grandmother say on the other end.

"Ok Gran, don't you worry about me, I'll be just fine." Sookie says.

"I know you will darling, now you stay in the house, and no inviting any boys over ya hear?" Her Gran giggles almost like a little girl.

"Sure thing Gran, but you know that might be hard to do what with all the boys at school practically beating down our door to be my beau." Sookie laughs too but it isn't the tinkeling bells laughter that I love, it's the hard self depricating one that I hate.

"Well Sookie girl, I pray the Good Lord forgives me for saying so but there ain't no lack a stupid in this town and I figure that's what accounts for your lack of beaus." This is probably as close as I will ever get to meeting Adele Stackhouse, but I can say with complete sencerity that I like the woman.

"Gran!" Sookie exclaims, her good southern mannesr shocked at what her grandmother has just said.

"I'm gonna go now darling you have a good night, make sure you eat some of that Pecan pie I put in the fridge okay, if I have another slice my heart doctor will kill me himself." Sookie giggles her sweet warm giggle at this and I swear I feel my dead heart take a beat.

"Sure thing Gran, good night." With that they disconnect. During the conversation I levitated onto the branches of one of the higher trees, but Sookie's position in the corner of the kitchen prevented me from seeing her at this angle. Now as she walks back into the living room I get my first glimpse of her, and I almost fall out of the tree.

She is so beautiful. So young. I had forgotten the barely visable inner light that seems to radiate out from Sookie, proclaiming her to be something other, something special. But now I see it again I am drawn to it, as I always was, like a moth to a flame. My intentions to simply watch her are completely forgotten and I find my body moving to the door of it's own accord, without the consent of my head. A short second later my hand is knocking on the door, without my quite realizing how I came to be standing here.

Before I can come to my sense and retreat back to the tree the door opens. I know now with certainty that I would never have been able to keep from speaking to her. Standing in front of me is the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld. The girl who will one day be the woman I love standing infront of me alive.

The teenage Sookie has long, long blond hair that reaches almost down to her waist, pulled back with a white headband. She's dressed in a checkered red and white long sleeve shirt with the top two buttons undone and a simple pair of jeans, and her perfect little feet are bare. From the door I can clearly see the candy pink polish on her toes. She is breathtaking,desire inducing, and the minute our eyes lock I feel that familiar jolt of electricity pass between us. All the pain of the past years seems to recede as I look at this little girl. My heart swells with love for her and though I know I can't, I want nothing more than to pull her into my arms, to hold her and love her and never let her go.

We have been staring at eachother silently now for about a minute. And while I know why I am star struck I can tell she is too but I can't really figure out why. Maybe it is because she's figured out that she can't hear me. Sookie won't meet any of us for another 8 years, so she would have no clue that vampires are silent to her, or that they even exist. She seems to shake herself out of our mutual trance first.

"Can I help you?" She asks a little breathlessly. I shake myself a little too to get my wits under control. She is here all alone for the night. Since Sookie cannot be glamoured I will need to charm my way to an invite in. I am here now and I intend to spend whatever time I have left before this spell ends with my beloved, regardless of the circumstances.

"I'm so sorry to bother you miss. But my car broke down about a mile down the road. I was wondering if I could use your phone?" I give her my most charming, innocent smile and try to make myself as boyish as possible. I was turned when I was 24 and though life was harder than, I guess they would say now that I had very good genes. I look young. Grown up of course, but young and right now I try to appear every bit the wholesome respectable stranger in trouble. One thing we vampires are good at is lying. The 16 year old Sookie seems to be far more susceptible to my charms than her older self and blushes prettily at me. It's all I can do not to throw myself against the magic barrier to her home and try and grab her out and make off with her into the night.

"Oh, how awful. Of course you can use the phone, please come in." With those words the barrier falls and I open the screen door and walk in. Walking over the threshold to her home, as she steps back and allows me in, makes me happier than I have been in 51 years.

I step very close to her so that we are very nearly touching and she is forced to crane her neck back to look at me. We are so close that I can feel the heat radiating off of her body, and with that delicious heat is something even more wonderful, Sookie's scent. I feel my eyes begin to sting and I try deperately to hold back tears so overcome am I. I haven't smelled her heavenly scent in so long and having it waft to me, float around me now, it feels like coming home. My God I have to control myself. All I can think about is picking her up, carrying her back to her bedroom and loving her all night long, until every inch of my body smells of her divine scent and every inch of hers smells like me. Instead I manage to smile and thank her for her hospitality.

Sookie get's a strange little grin on her face and just nods her head, her eyes locked to mine. Without either of us meaning too our faces seem to be getting closer together, but just at the last moment Sookie leans back against the open door and seems to remember herself.

"The phone is in the kitchen. Follow me." Anywhere, everywhere, always my beautiful little love. You cannot even imagine.


	14. Chapter 14

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Sookie's POV

As I make my way back to the kitchen, I try to keep my feet steady. I've been two seconds away from embarasing myself by saying or doing something stupid since the moment I opened the door. I was just about to settle in for the night with one of Gran's romance novels when there was a knock at the door and behind it was one of the hero's from those books in the flesh.

I have never seen a man so beautiful in all my life. Long golden hair running down past his shoulders, sea blue eyes that seem so deep you could drown in them, and my God he's so tall, so male. When he walked through the door and we were so close I only came up to his chest. I know I stared at him like an idiot for like a full minute or more before even saying anything. God, maybe telepathy isn't the only reason I don't have a boyfriend, maybe men just make me stupid.

But I couldn't help it, besides being the most beautiful man alive he's also silent! I can't explain it, but I can't read his mind. If I closed my eyes it would feel like I'm the only one here. It's so amazing that I think I'll ask him to stay and wait for the tow truck here so that I can talk to him more.

I stop abruptly and turn around about to ask him to stay when we collide into eachother. Without being able to hear him I didn't realize he was so close behind me. The force of his body running into mine sends me staggering back a few steps and I loose my balance falling backwards when suddenly I find myself craddled in two impossibly strong arms.

Our eyes lock and again it's as if we're frozen. He must be incredibly strong because for a few moments we just stay like that, bent over slightly, his arms around me the only thing between me and crashing to the floor. I don't even know his name but I want to kiss him, to pull his face to mine and taste those lips that have been smiling at me since I opened the door. It's an overwhelming desire and I have to shake myself again to restart my brain. He seems to come out of it to and pulls me to him and straightens us out. For one brief perfect moment in time every part of me is pressed up against every part of him and I feel like I might just forget how to breath! But just then he releases me. Giving me a bashful smile he runs a hand through his long hair and apologizes.

"Gee, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to plow into you like that." He means it sincerely I can tell, but I gulp anyway at the mental image his choice of words provokes. I've been reading to many of Gran's romance novels. I need to find something more age appropriate to devote my time to.

"Oh it's not your fault, I should have thought before just stopping like that." I smile up at him shyly. Jesus Christ shepard of Judea Sookie Stackhouse get yourself under control. This poor man is probably tired and wants to get home. Show him the phone. "Um, the phone is right there on the wall. There's only one tow truck service here in Bon Temps. My car is pretty fussy so the number is right there on the pad next to the phone. Rit Morris Towing. Um, can I get you anything to drink?" Gran would tan my hide if I didn't ask.

"Thank you, um, just a glass of water if it's not to much trouble." He smiles at me again and I think my insides are going to melt. But this time I manage to nod and go about getting him some water and me a Fresca while he talks to Mr. Morris about where his car is and how soon they'll be out here. When he hangs up I hand him the glass of water and offer him a seat at the table.

"I'm Sookie by the way, Sookie Stackhouse." I hold out my hand to him.

"How rude of me. Eric Northman." He shakes my hand and I'm struck by how cold it is, but then I guess he's been walking outside in the November chill for a good long while now. "Thank you again Miss Stackhouse for your hospitality. Mr. Morris said he'd be out here in about an hour to get the car." My eyes light up when I hear that and I take the opportunity to ask him to stay.

"Oh that's wonderful, but you know it's awfully cold outside for you to be waiting by your car for so long. Why don't you wait here were it's warm. You can just call Mr. Morris back real quick and let him know that your at the Stackhouse farm, and for him to come here when he get's your car." Something behind his eyes seems to positively light up when I say that and for a moment I actual entertain the rediculous idea that this incredibly gorgeous, incredibly unique man might want my company as much as I want his. How silly, men, especially adult men down look at a little girl like me and think anything except that I'm a little girl...well, that, and that I'm strange.

"That's incredibly kind of you Ms. Stackhouse," he begins to say, but I interupt him before he can finish just in case he's about to turn me down.

"Nonsense, my Gran would never forgive me if I let a gentleman in distress sit out in the cold." I flash him my brightest southern belle smile, and our eyes lock again. I feel like I'm being drawn to him even though I'm not moving, and that desire to touch him is again almost unbearable. Then he smiles brightly and the tension seems to break.

"Well I certainly wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your Gran. I'll call Mr. Morris right now. Thank you again Ms. Stackhouse. I'll be happy to be your gentleman in distress any time." He chuckles softly and the sound is like waves crashing against rocks. Beautiful, claming, and exciting all at once.

He makes thecall back to Mr. Morris and then he turns to me and smiles about to retake his seat at the table. I want so badly to be closer to him so I seize on an idea.

"Are you cold Mr. Northman?" He looks slightly taken back for a second so I explain myself. "It's just that when we shook hands yours was so cold and I know you've been out in the chilly air for a while now, If you wanted to we could sit out in the livingroom and I could start a fire to warm you up?" I smile at him again hoping he'll say yes. He hesiates for only a second and then replies.

"Now that you mention it I am a little cold yes. A fire sounds lovely but why don't you let me start it? It's not right for a gentleman, even one in distress, to let a lady do all the work." His words and the smile that accompany them send an absolute thrill through my body. He called me a Lady!

We walk back out into the living room and as promised he starts a fire. Once it's going nicely he sits down in front of it and waves his hand for me to come and join him. For the next hour or more we sit in front of the fire and talk about everything and nothing. He tells me he's from Shreveport and recounts the story of how his car came to breakdown just a mile or so from my house. I tell him shyly about school, and my Gran, and my brother. At first I'm convinced that I'm making a fool of myself, why would any grown up, but especially a man like this, care one little bit about my boring life. Of course this is the one moment when I wish that I could read his mind. But if he's bored he doesn't let on, quite the opposite he seems to be hanging on my every word as though I'm the most facinating person he's ever met.

As we talk that strange mangnetic thing that's been happening between us all night happens again and we seem to be getting closer and closer to eachother with out either of us deliberately moving. By the time I finish telling him about my life so to speak we are essentially face to face. I stop talking and we just look deep into eachother's eyes, and then I hear his voice. Just a single word but it's my undoing.

"Sookie."

With that our lips meet and we begin to kiss. I've only been kissed once before by JB DuRone and it was nice. But it's nothing, NOTHING like this. The two are not even comparable as the same activity.

Eric's lips glide gently over mine, pressing softly, nibbling slightly, and then I feel his tongue pressing gently against my bottom lip asking for permission to enter. It's not even a conscious choice on my part, my lips simply part and all of the sudden we're tasting each other and Eric pulls me to him and holds me tightly, every part of me that can be, pressed up against the corresponding part of him.

After a few minutes we break apart for air and just look at each other and smile. Who is this man? Where did he come from? How can I be in love with him after only 60 minutes?

Just as we are about to kiss again there is a knock at the door. With a heavy sigh I get up to answer it. It's Mr. Morris. There seems to be some confusion about exactly where Eric's car is, so I let Eric take over the conversation and decide to freshen up in the ladies room.

I'm just about to use the bathroom when I realize that I forgot to put the new bottle of handsoap on the sink, I think it's still in the grocery bag by the kitchen door. I run back out intending to breeze past Eric and Mr. Morris and run to the kitchen when I realize that something isn't right. Mr. Morris's mind has just kind of stopped. I slink back into the shadows and watch what's going on with increasing fear. Mr. Morris is just standing in the middle of my living room staring aimlessly and Eric is wrapping off orders to him in a strange, eerie voice.

"You will leave here now. Go home. Call here in one hour and tell Sookie that you found the car but forgot to pick me up. Do you understand?" Mr. Morris nods dumbly.

"Excellent now leave." Mr. Morris turns around and heads straight out the door to his truck as though he's in a trance. Eric closes the door and locks it. I don't have much time to decide what to do, but I know I need to do something. Either I have to get him out of the house or confront him. If he wanted to kill me or hurt me he had plenty of time to do it. So I don't think I'm in any immediate danger. I decide to confront him.

I step out of the shadow of the hallway just as he's turning around and I see the moment he realizes that I have witnessed the little scene that just played out. His face turns slightly panicked and he reaches out a hand to me but makes no move to come closer.

"Sookie," He says, and this time his voice is filled with worry.

"What are you?" I ask. It has just dawned on me that his silent brain and his ability to do... whatever it is that he just did to Mr. Morris must be linked, and that I have never met anyone capable of doing that.

"Sookie you must listen to me," He begins but I cut him off.

"I'm very willing to listen but I better be hearing you tell me what you are and what you're doing hear." I have no hope of physcially intimidating this man, but I straighten myself up to my full height, puff out my chest, and try to look confident.


	15. Chapter 15

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Eric's POV

FUCK! How was I so careless that I didn't hear her behind me. I have to make a decision, quickly. Either I leave here now or I tell her the truth and hope like hell that she lets me stay. It seems a pretty thin hope but I don't want to leave. I want to be with her. I have only this night, I cannot loose the next few hours. I can't, I will never see her again!

Sookie is standing in front of me, so young, and so difiant. She has no chance of physically overpowering me and yet she stands there attempting to look as though she could crush a mountain. It's one of the first things that I loved about her. Unlike all of the supernaturals that used to surround her, she was always so fragile,so physcially breakable, and yet she was always the first to risk her neck for those she loved. The coupling of that feirceness of spirit and fragility of body was the first real blow to my armor and seeing it now I realize that while I have whined and moaned and decried my decision not to turn her against her will for a full half century, here in this minute I know with perfect clarity that given the opportunity all over again, I would never do it. I would never take from her without consent that which makes her her. Her fragile humanity is so much a part of her and so much a part of what I love about her. It's not the greatest moment to have such a profound epiphany and so I pull myself together and prepare to give her the answers that an innocent, sheltered teenager is most definitely not prepared to hear.

"You know that you cannot hear my mind, yes?" Her eyebrows go sky high at that statement. She looks panicked for a moment that I somehow know her secret, but then just nods slowly. "I swear to you Sookie I mean you no harm, I could never, never hurt you." She nods.

"What are you?" She asks again quietly. I take a deep unnecessary breath and tell her everything as we stand on opposite sides of her living room. I tell her what I am, who I am, and why I am here. She hears the whole thing with an equanimity that I would never have imagined her possessing, especially at this young age.

"You must be terrified, overwhelmed by everything I've said", I question when my story is done. She looks at me for a brief but penetrating moment.

"No, I'm...relieved?" She says trying the adjective out to see if it fits. "It's wonderful to know that I'm not alone, that I'm not the only person that's ...different in the world." She looks at me questioningly, asking me without words if I understand. I just nod and smile at her. "It's amazing, and so sad what you've told me, but how do I know you're telling me the truth? I mean I know I can't read your mind and I know you did something to Mr. Morris's head, but still that's a far cry from time traveling vampire."

"Promise me that you will not be afraid of me." She nods again, and with that I let my fangs snick down. She gasps audiably. But instead of screaming, or running away from me she begins to glide closer until we are nearly touching. She looks up at me with big, wide blue eyes and tentatively reaches up to touch my fangs.

I let her and the sensation of my love shyly, tenderly carressing them once more is so amazing, so arousing that I have to fist my hands until I feel my fingernails draw blood not to grab her and sink my fangs into her. When I feel myself under control again I take my hands and gently place them on her hips needing to touch her.

"And, you love me? You came back to save me?" She says it with wonder in her voice. I nod looking down at the floor, shoulders slumping in defeat.

"And I have failed. But I could not go back without seeing you again. Being here with you, talking with you, touching you, it's all I'm living for Sookie." I feel tears stinging the back of my eyes but I will not let them fall. I have been weak many times in the last 51 years but I will not cry in front of my love.

"Then stay." She whispers, going up on her tip toes and wrapping her arms around my neck. I lean down and we are kissing once again. Devouring each other as though there is nothing else in the world. This is as close to bliss as I will ever come.

We break apart again so that she can breath and I lead her back to the fire. This time when we sit I place her on my lap and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her side flush against my chest. She lays her little head gently on my shoulder, tucking her face into that spot against my neck that was made just for her. I want nothing more than to make love to her, but I cannot. She is a child, and to do so would be the worst kind of betrayal of our love. I cannot do that to my Sookie. So instead I revel in the bitter sweet torture of touching her and breathing her in, and tell her of the future that we will have together, I tell her about the Great Revelation and her meeting Bill Compton. I stress that she should not trust him this time around, and that when the time comes for her to help her brother she should come to me without fear. I will not know her of course, but it will not matter, I will help her and love her without question as I would have the first time, if she had let me. Then I tell her all about us.

She laughs, and cries a little, and I know that truly she cannot really comprehend that all of this is going to happen, she is hearing it rather like a small child would hear a fairytale. But if anything I say tonight might soften her to me in the future to come than I will talk until dawn.

And I do.

We talk and kiss and I try to enjoy the time with her for what it is and not think about dawn, but too soon I feel the pull of the sun. I have stayed to late to get back to Shreveport, but I could not tear myself away. It matters not, I am more than accustomed to sleeping in the cemetary. One more night in that ground will be nothing to me. Sookie has held me the entire night and now she yawns adorably into my shoulder.

"It is almost dawn my love. We must get you to bed." I pick her up and carry her into her little bedroom, laying her gently down upon the small bed.

"Eric I don't want you to go!" She says gripping my hand in hers and brushing my hair from my face with the other.

"Believe me my love, I wish more than anything that I did not have to leave, but there is no help for it." I wish there was something I could do or say to comfort both of us. Suddenly I think of something. I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my wallet. Inside is a battered picture of Sookie and I. Her brother took it one night when we went out dancing with him and his wife Michelle. In it Sookie and I are smiling at the camera, her had resting on my shoulder.

"Take this to remember me by, so you will know me when we meet again." She looks down at me and the future her and smiles.

"We look happy." She says.

"We were. It was not for long, but we were, and you have made me so again tonight my love." I say stroking her hair.

"I love you," She says softly and pulls me into a final kiss. When I am outside of the house I turn back and look on her one final time. She is watching me through the window of her bedroom. My heart contracts as I see her lying there.

"Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb; Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale." I whisper and turn to make my way to the cemetary, back to hell.


	16. Chapter 16

_Authors note: This is it! The last chapter. Thank you SOOOO much to everyone who stuck with my story, who reviewed, put it on alert, and in their favorites! It means so much to me! You all Rock! :)_

_Disclaimer: I own nothing..._

Eric POV

When I wake again, I feel a terrible sense of diorientation. The coming forward seems to have effected me worse than the going back. I wonder at first why that should be, and then I realize that it is because I am not in the place I expected to be. I am not in the ground.

I open my eyes slowly, cautiously. I am lying on my back and so the vision that greets me appears to be the ceiling of my bedroom in my home. Curious, I turn to examine my surroundings further. It is then that I freeze. I fear to move, I fear to make a single noise, I fear to do anything that might shatter this moment. If I dream, I fear to accidently wake myself.

She is lovelier than the godesses that men worshipped in my youth. Her golden hair fanned out around her like a hallo, her perfect pillow pink lips parted slightly in her slumber, her lush feminine form covered only by a sheet. She rests next to me on the bed our hands intertwined.

Just as I sense that darkness has completely fallen she begins to stir. Her eyes open slowly. She looks over at me and smiles as though she is completely unsuprised to find me lying here, or find that she has woken in this state, as though neither of these things is new to her. She disengages her hand from mine and raises her arms above her head in an unnecessary stretch. I watch tongue tied as the sheet falls away from her revealing her glorious upper body to my hungry eyes.

"I was dreaming." She says, her voice low and throaty. I am not capable of speech yet and so I simply raise my eyebrow in silent question. She laughs softly, the sound like a thousand tiny tinkeling bells. "I was dreaming of you." She leans over slowly and lays her lips on mine in a soft, passionate kiss, pressing her naked torsoe to mine, and in that moment the memories start to flood into me. It feels much the same as when I regained my memories of my time cursed by Hallow, but this time there are so many more of them. Not just 5 days worth this time, but 54 years.

I did not fail.

That night, that wrong November 10th changed everything that came after it. I cannot yet make sense of all of the information that has just dropped itself into my brain, but a few of the memories stand out more clearly, more coherently than the others.

Her, walking into Fangtasia in a white dress with red flowers, approaching Pam and I as we sat at our booth. I remember feeling wonderment. Who was this creature and where did she come from? She came alone, had never seen me before nor I her, but she walked up to me as though I was her destiny, and by the time we finished our first conversation I knew she was mine.

The night our bond became permenant. I pull hazy images out the deluge of events swirling around in my brain. Images of our naked bodies entwined on top of the sheets of this very bed, vowing our lives to eachother in heated whispers. Passionately joining together as the magic of our bloods mingleling for the third time binds us together permanently.

Her grandmother's funeral. This time around she lived three more years before dying peacefully in her bed. This time I did have the honor to know her, and as I knew I would on that night 62 years ago, I liked her very much. She once told me that I made up for "all the stupid" her granddaughter had had to endure and I remember feeling as though I'd never been paid a higher compliment.

"It's November 11th." She says quietly, pulling me from my revere. I look over at her and find her smiling at me beatifically. "Do you remember visiting me all those years ago when I was a girl?" Her look is hopeful. I nod dumbfounded, and she smiles. "I've been waiting a long time for you to remember that night." I stroke my hand down her cool cheek.

"You let me turn you." I whisper in wonderment. She looks at me, her big blue eyes widening in astonishment for a moment, and then she takes both my hands in hers and brings them each to her lips.

"How could I leave my beloved?" I want to tell her how much I love her. How I cannot believe that she is here with me, that I will never have be without her again. She chose not to leave me! She chose me! There is so much emotion inside of me bursting to be released, but I find that only one word escapes my lips. A whisper, a prayer.

"Sookie."


End file.
